News

The Japanese government declared the second stare of emergency in Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama on January 7 for a month until February 8, while Prime Minister Suga showed a willingness to host Tokyo Olympics this summer.

Japanese guest nights in 66 hotels were up 42.8% year on year in November 2020, which was the largest YOY growth since the survey began.The average occupancy rate was 63.2%, 22.2 points higher than October (41.0%), improving for seven months in a row.

The total number of Japanese guest nights was down 15.7% to 34.2 million in November 2020, improving from a 35.2% reduction in October 2020 clearly because of ‘Go To Travel,' and international guest nights increased from 270,000 in October 2020 to 440,000 due to the limited ease of the entry rules.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) surveyed the relevance between inbound travelers’ needs and spread of COVID-19 in Taiwan and Hong Kong as short-haul markets and U.K. and Australia as long-haul markets, giving insights toward reopening of the inbound travel market in the future.

45% of Japanese respondents are interested in vacation rental as on option of accommodations, selecting ‘condominium or apartment' as the top, although the awareness rate is still low at 19%, according to Expedia survey.

Japan will suspend new entries from all of foreign countries and regions until January 31 2021 to avoid possible inclusion of new variants of COVID-19, and the 14-days quarantine exemption for short-term business travelers will also be suspended.

‘Go To Travel,’ the Japan’s domestic travel recovery initiative, was used by 68.5 billion guest nights from the opening day of July 11 to the end of November, and a budget used for the initiative totaled about 406.3 billion JPY at least.

Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea have decided to introduce their first dynamic pricing system on March 20 2021, ranging from 8,200 JPY to 8,700 JPY for an adult one-day passport. The prices vary with seasons or day of week.

The Japanese government accepted a FY2021 budget draft of 40.9 billion JPY, 40% less than the FY2020 budget, for Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) that is focusing on new travel styles including Workcation and promotion of digital transformation for the tourism services as new policies in FY2021.

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting has calculated losses of 9.6 million travelers and 318.7 billion JPY in travel consumption due to the tentative suspension. Japanese domestic travelers during 2020-2021 New Year holiday period is expected to reduce by 73% to 7.9 million from 29.3 million a year ago.

Sales of 47 major travel companies reduced by 65.7% year on year to 155.6 billion JPY in total in October 2020. Domestic travel were down by 38.7% to 151 billion JPY, improving from from a 62.8% reduction in September, boosted by ‘Go To Travel' that has included Tokyo in October.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers was down 98.1% year on year to 30,700 in November 2020.No large increase was seen in November, despite ease of quarantine for Japanese business travelers after returning to Japan and start of pre-test program for Japanese travelers in Hawaii.

The number of international arrivals in Japan was down 97.7% year on year to 56,700 in November 2020, doubling from the previous month (28,000 arrivals). Arrivals from China still decreased by 97.6% year on year to 18,100, but largely increasing from 4,500 in October.

HIS will reduce its retail stores in Japan from 259 to 212 in the end of FY2020 and to 154 in Q1 of FY2021, as it posted net loss of 25 billion JPY for the full year of FY2020 ended October 31 2020. Chairman Sawada said “We are trying to regain profit in the latter half of FY2021.”

The Japanese government decided to suspend the domestic travel recovery initiative ‘Go To Travel’ nationwide until January 11 to make all efforts to stop infection spread. Compensation of cancellations for travel operators is up to 50% of the booked travel price.

Japanese guest nights in Kyoto City in October 2020 were up 2.2% year on year, the first monthly growth in the past 13 months since September 2019, and the average occupancy rate was also up 8.2 point to 41.0% compared to September, marking the first 40% or higher since Declaration of the State of Emergency.

Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) is developing ‘decentralized travel’ campaign as a New Normal traveling style. Using the special logo, travel operators are developing their original campaigns, creating decentralized travel-themed products and offering reward opportunities.

The JTB survey on travel trend in this coming New Year holidays results find that the ratio of ‘traveling including homecoming’ accounted for 14.8% including ‘probably traveling (6.9%),’ which was 5.2 lower points than a year ago.

JAL will provide all international flight passengers with ‘JAL Corona Cover,’ an insurance service to compensate medical, testing and quarantine expenses for a positive case in traveling, from December 23 2020 to June 30 2021.

JNTO Hanoi Office’s survey finds that about 70% of local travel agents intend to restart selling travel in Japan by the next cherry blossom season, but 82% answered that ‘lifting of travel restrictions in both Japan and Vietnam’ will be required.